Day 7 - Tuesday in Acadia National Park

We knew that the rain would put a damper on our day, but we were excited to get out and enjoy some of the park, so we went down to the Wonderland trail, which is near the campground.  It's a short hike that, according to the guidebook, shows hikers how the forest leads right to the shore.  But it was so foggy and rainy that we didn't hang around much to admire the ecosystem.  The rain, fog, and blowing wind did feel like what we imagined Maine would feel like.  (Megan's view of Maine was almost entirely made up from watching Pete's Dragon as a child and the rainy day wasn't too far off from the night Elliot has to light the wick.)  Or that guy on the Gorton's fish stick packages - it seemed like his life.


After getting soggy on the short hike, we dropped plans to keep hiking and went driving around in search of NPS stamps.  The whole stamping thing has gotten a little out of control.  In the beginning, many many years ago, each site or park got their own stamp with their name and the date.  Then they made individual stamps for visitor centers or oft-frequented ranger stations.  This makes sense for big parks, to differentiate between only seeing parts of it.  However, in Acadia, they've struck a deal with the gift shop owners to include a unique stamp for each visitor center AND gift shop.  Since it was a rainy day, driving from gift shop to gift shop didn't seem like a bad way to spend it and Megan got 6 or so stamps.

We had hoped that the pouring rain would let up and let us walk around a bit more in the park, but that was not meant to be.  There were driving winds and rain most of the day and getting stamps became an obstacle course: sprint as fast as you can but don't stamp in the puddles on the way into the gift shop.  We were soaked through our rain jackets (we each brought 2 so we kept switching back and forth) more than once that day and didn't really take any pictures.

By evening the "cats and dogs" had slacked off to "just raining" so after dinner we tried for a bucket list item.  It had been listed on several pinterest "must do before you die" lists to "watch the sun set from Bass Harbor Lighthouse".  We thought maybe the clouds would lift a little more and make for a pretty sunset.  Nope.  The clouds settled on the water as impenetrable fog.  But listening to the tolling of the fog bells was fun - until the rain came back.  Then we just got in the car and headed back to camp to wait out the rain and catch up on reading.

And now a quick comparison of what we were supposed to see:

From Day 7 - Tuesday Acadia National Park

and what we did see.

From Day 7 - Tuesday Acadia National Park

During the night, however, Megan woke up to a sound outside the tent she couldn't identify.  It was quickly followed by a "bang crash" that was definitely identifiable.  We had been warned to use ratchet straps on our food containers because the raccoons can open rubbermaid totes.  We had done so, but that didn't stop the little bugger from knocking our food totes off the picnic table just to see if he could get into it.  Megan did the brave thing and woke Brett up and insisted that if the raccoon was rabid, he would probably be less likely to be bit because boys apparently have a force field for things that go bump in the night.  He hung his head around the tent and shined a flashlight through the rain and the big eyes of the raccoon stared back at him before running off.  Between the sound of the rain pouring on the tent and the story the ranger had told us about how sometimes the raccoons will shred tents, there wasn't much more sleeping to be had that night.    

Slideshow is below or you can look at the full album here.